


Your midnight and mine

by elo_elo



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Captivity, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Gentle Sex, Graphic Descriptions of Rape, Graphic Violence, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Season 9, Slow Burn, Smut, Sweet Sex, Torture, captivity aftermath
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:34:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elo_elo/pseuds/elo_elo
Summary: Her life is definitive now. A clean cut between before and after. The person she is now severed forever from the person she used to be.Or a woman tries to rebuild her life after a nightmare. Love blooms somewhere in the cracks.
Relationships: Spencer Reid/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who’s been watching a whole lot of Criminal Minds in quarantine lol. 
> 
> So this work is not only way outside my normal fandoms but it’s a lot darker than I usually go. It’s really self-indulgent I won’t lie. This year has been incredibly hard and I just wanted to write something about recovering, about safety and comfort. I wanted to write a world where bad things happen but the good guys win and you can heal. Maybe it’ll be comforting to you too.   
> That said, please mind the tags. There will be very violent descriptions of torture and sexual assault but also gratuitous descriptions of healing and tenderness and that is where the focus will lay.

“You should let me call you a cab.” The air outside feels almost balmy, steam rising from the street. It had been frigid when she and Andrew got to the restaurant just an hour before and Mare’s coat feels too heavy now, overbearing. It’s a fluke, she knows, for it to be this warm the first week of December. But it feels nice. Really nice. Almost cinematic in the way the lights from the city seem to dance across the melting snow She’s full, a little drowsy from the two glasses of wine she drank, and the warm air of the night just softens her further. So much so that she almost doesn’t hear him the first time.

Mare turns, eyebrow raised. “A cab?” Andrew has his hands stuffed in his pockets, gazing out toward the passing traffic from the sidewalk. He’d been quiet over dinner, unusually so. “What for? My house is like ten blocks away.”

“It’s not safe to walk home alone. Not with everything that’s been happening.” She quirks her eyebrow higher. Andrew scoffs, shaking his head. “Come on, Mare. You know.” Silence. “ _The guy_.”

“What guy?”

“Do you ever listen to me when we talk at work?”

Mare laughs. “From time to time, but frankly your reporting depresses me.” He scoffs again, brings his hands to his back pocket then pauses, nose twitching before he folds his arms over his chest. “What’s it been? Two weeks?”

“Three. Everything tastes like nicotine gum now and will you listen to me? They’ve found three women dead in the last two months.”

She does remember that, a little. Remembers hearing it on the news in passing at the laundromat. Remembers Andrew mush-mouthed at a bar after his last breakup, talking about his newest story. But she doesn’t really remember it being all that noteworthy. Not in the lead up to an election here or the bombings in Syria or the myriad other things that have dominated the news cycle this year. “This is DC. People get murdered.”

“It’s not like that, Mare. Young women. Young professionals. The FBI is involved.”

She turns to look at him, both eyebrows raised. “This is DC. The FBI gets involved”

Andrew shifts on his feet, his body rigid, incredulous. “Call a fucking cab, what’s the harm?”

Mare snorts. “The harm?” She opens her arms, the stars somehow twinkling above them, defiant against the bright light of the city. “The harm is that I miss the last warm night of the year.”

“There will be other warm nights.”

“Maybe none like this.”

“There won’t be any more nights at all if you end up dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Mare scoffs. “What are the odds?” She turns to face him full on now. He’s narrow, tall. The stern lines of his face only accentuated by the lights from the passing cars. She has to look up at him to meet his eyes. “Honestly, Andrew, what are the odds?”

She thinks it’s him. Andrew. Four fingers over her eyes, the warmth of skin against skin. A block from home, the air growing chilly again. It’s only when her feet lift off the ground, an arm tightly around her middle, that she realizes how stupid that would be. For him to follow her all these blocks, for him to grab at her, yank her backward. She reaches. Forward and behind her. One hand catches air, the other the soft fabric of a coat. The fingers move from her eyes to her mouth. She doesn’t think to bite them until much later. Until she can’t. The stars seem to shiver above her. They blot out, one by one.

_

Her name is Margaret Baum. Margaret was the 89th most popular name in 1986, the year she was born. It’s derived from the Sanskrit word mañjarī which means pearl or cluster of blossoms. She goes by Margo professionally; her friends and family call her Mare. Spencer has a headache that the two ibuprofen he took with his coffee aren’t even touching.

Her last name – Baum – is German, but Spencer assumes this is a genealogical one-off because everything else about her reads Italian. Olive skin, full lips, dark eyes. She’s symmetrical, has statistically appealing characteristics. A good ratio of cheekbone to chin. Morgan called her a pretty little thing during their last briefing. _Pretty little thing like that would have been a prime target for our guy._

She looks happy in the photo the press is using, the one Hotch tacked to the board that morning. A big toothy smile. But they almost always look happy. The victims. In the pictures the news uses. Even the loneliest people seem to have at least one good photo. And she was far from lonely, at least as far as he can tell. Lots of friends. Family. Close with her only sister. Probably because their father died when she was young. From cancer. Pancreatic. Her mother has remarried. They don’t seem to be in touch. Garcia sets a fresh cup of coffee down on the edge of his desk. She squeezes his shoulder, turns back to smile as she walks up toward her office. Garcia only does this when she’s worried. About him or something else, it’s hard for him to tell. Probably him. At least she isn’t asking how he’s feeling anymore. At least she isn’t asking about Maeve. Spencer leans a little back in his chair, sets her picture down by the rest of her file.

She’s 29. Born November 26th. A Sagittarius which he only knows because Garcia still reads him his horoscope at the start of every week. _Optimistic, fair-minded, honest, spontaneous, and fun._ Spencer is ambivalent about astrology. Listening to Garcia read his horoscope every Monday in the break room over Dunkin is maybe the most soothing part of his week. Rossi walks past Spencer’s desk. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t say hello. He is walking at the same clip he always does but with his hands stiffly in his pockets. Something’s happened. Something probably medium-serious. But Spencer doesn’t get up to follow. They won’t have found her body yet, he knows, not if the MO holds. Spencer opens her file again.

Margaret graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Journalism from Northwestern in 2008. Northwestern’s school of journalism ranks number one among several reputable college ranking systems. She took a few years after graduation to live in Italy and Greece. Rome and Thessaloniki. 2.873 million and 315,196 people respectively. She started writing about food there. A blog that became a newspaper column. She was writing about food the night the unsub took her. Or at least might have been though her financials show she’s been to that specific restaurant place a lot in the four years she’s lived in DC. Mama Ayesha’s. A middle eastern restaurant that has operated, in some capacity, since 1960. The friend she ate with provided their receipt. An order of labneh and kabis to start. Bamya and menzalah for entrees. Kanafa for dessert. Spencer has never eaten any of these things, but he looked up the ingredients and can approximate what they might have tasted like. Delicious, he thinks. They had three glasses of red wine between them. Morgan walks past his desk, ruffles Spencer’s hair. He’s flushed from the gym, still a little sweaty. He sits hard down in his chair, leans a little back, his pen between his lips, expression slammed shut. It’s been a hard week for all of them. Spencer takes a sip of coffee. Garcia’s added too much sugar. Probably on purpose.

Mama Ayesha’s is seventeen blocks from Margarets apartment, _as the crow flies_ Gideon might have said. It would have taken her approximately 25 minutes to walk there depending on her speed and the length of her strides. A studio apartment among a long line of colorful brownstones just a block from Montrose Park, not far from the Japanese embassy. He went with JJ to take a look. The apartment was neat but crowded. It reminded him, just a little, of his own. Margaret likes houseplants but not exotic ones. Ones that are easy to care for. Low risk, high reward. Long, vining pothos a little wilted by the time he saw them. Likely from overwatering. Probably at the hands her friend Andrew. They went to the restaurant together. He’s been sleeping there to take care of her cat, sat shaking on the couch when he and JJ arrived, one hand clutched around a watering can like maybe it was the last thing tethering him to anything at all.

The cat is named Cinder. It’s the third most popular name in the US for a black cat with yellow or orange eyes. This one has orange. It hissed at JJ, rubbed its tail along Spencer’s pant leg. Her friend got sick as they searched her desk. Spencer could hear him retching through the bathroom’s thin door. He’s a crime reporter. Spencer has read some of his coverage on this case. Informative, if a little dry. JJ likes that it isn’t inflammatory. He’s probably seen the autopsy reports of the victims they’ve already found. He was probably imagining all kinds of horrible things in that bathroom.

She was taken on her way home. They have no idea at what point and it’s a sticking point for Hotch who seems to think the point of contact is key. Spencer agrees. It matters if he trailed her all the way from the restaurant or picked her up just outside her house. Says a lot about his mindset.Her friend told Spencer, as they were packing to leave, that he had begged her to take a cab. Spencer asked why she didn’t. _She’s like that,_ her friend said. Spencer wonders again what exactly that means.

They know each other from work, Margaret and Andrew. She is a food writer for _The Washingtonian_. A sometime critic. She has written 200 articles in the three years that she has worked for the paper. Averaging 1 long form article a week. Prolific. Rossi knows her. Not personally. But he reads her articles, says she has a good head for a restaurant review. Spencer takes this seriously because he knows Rossi loves food almost as much as he loves cigars and Rossi has yellow stains on the fingers of one hand from how much he loves those. The last time they all went to Rossi’s house he served them pasta _dalla forma._ Ordered a wheel of pecorino romano the size of an armchair from a small farm in Sardinia. That had been in the summer. A night of wine and fireflies on Rossi’s back patio that feels as far away now as it could possibly feel, the dry air of the heat circulating through the BAU offices, his shoes just a little damp from trudging through the snow. 

Spencer read some of her pieces. Initially, to get a better sense of victimology. The unsub likes women between 25 and 35, young professionals. The first had been a dermatologist. Then a dental hygienist. Then a florist. Margaret fits the profile. Which had been his original intention in reading the articles. To make sure. But he keeps returning to them. Her articles. Because even though his meals usually consist of whatever they have at the office or whatever frozen entrée he can buy from the grocery store, he likes them. Florid writing, attention to detail. A love of comfort and softness, a lust for the simples pleasures in life, and maybe that’s what’s getting him. Because they have a profile of the killer now. It’s a bad one this time. In nearly a decade of bad ones. The bodies they have found appear, on the surface, untouched. Almost pristine. The evidence of torture comes to light only during the autopsy. Bruised ribs, chipped teeth. Evidence of internal genital mutilation. Of rape. In all its brutal iterations. He suffocates them, at the end, the whites of their eyes pinpricked in red. 

It’s getting to him, this one. He feels a deep unease inside himself. He doesn’t know why. Maybe because she’s local. Maybe because they have so many pictures of her. Maybe because when he and JJ went to her appointment, he noticed that they had, strangely, the same taste in fiction. Maybe because her sister had to be removed from the property by security because she was hysterical. Could not be calmed down. Crying, screaming, braying like an animal. Maybe because it’s almost Christmas. A few lights and garland strung around the office; a mass email from JJ about a department Christmas party. _Bring something sweet to share!_ Maybe because sometimes he can still hear the gurgle in the back of Maeve’s throat as she died, as close as if he was still there, still in that room, no matter how much therapy he goes to. Spencer takes a sip of coffee, counts down to the second when he will be able to take another ibuprofen. According to the profile, Margaret is still alive. The unsub holds them for two weeks before he kills them. She is undoubtedly still alive. She probably wishes she wasn’t.

He’s halfway through slicing a tomato for dinner when he has to stop, when one of Margaret’s articles comes whirring into the fore of his mind. It was the last one of hers he read, written in July. About tomatoes. A long form love letter, really. He’d never seen tomatoes described the way she had, could almost taste them as he read. The bite of the skin and the lushness of the seeds. That earthy sharpness that stops just short of sweet. Tomatoes sliced thin over ricotta toasts, cracked pepper on top, a glint of olive oil. Tomatoes chopped alongside eggplant, sauteed and tossed with toothsome pasta, flecked with herbs and parmesan. Tomatoes eaten like apples. A love letter to summer nights. Wine and fireflies. He’d forward it to Rossi. There’s another part of the unsub’s MO that they’re still trying to work out the significance of. He starves them, his victims. Their ribs pressing tightly to their skin by the time they’re found. Spencer puts the knife down, rests his palms on either side of the cutting board Prentiss got him last Christmas. The light arcs through his narrow kitchen, casting shadows across his knuckles. The tomato looks almost wilted sitting there, so out of season, so wrong. Wilted like the plants in Margaret’s apartment. He’s lost his appetite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick reminder to please mind the tags.

One August 11th, 2019, Margaret Baum wrote an article for _The Washingtonian_ about lemonade _._ She wrote it as an ode in three parts. In Thessaloniki, when she was just 22, she’d sat on the porch of a friend’s grandmother. The White Tower off in the distant sunlight, the warm breezes of the Aegean rustling her hair as the afternoon stretched out long in front of her. The sea made her feel ancient, she wrote, endless. The water a deep blue that faded to an almost fantastical aquamarine as it lapped against the store, wearing the old bricks and stones beside the house down, leaving its imprint year after year.

The old grandmother’s name was Amaltheia and that sunny afternoon she spent the better part of an hour macerating thinly sliced lemons, peel on, with her hands until the sugar broke the peels down, left a liquid so rich that it almost sizzled when the old woman poured in a splash of orange flower liquor, a cup of chilled water.

It’s a traditional style of making the drink, Spencer knows. Probably originated in Lebanon and not Greece though its exact origins are not clear. He’s been picking at the skin around his nails lately. An old habit that his mother used to scold him for. If he tried to prepare the drink as Margaret suggests in the article, the oils from the peel and the pulp would sting the open wounds.

A year later in Italy she’d celebrated her first published article with a glass of lemonade at a street café in Rome, the cobblestones warm under her feet. That lemonade had been less intense than the one before, faintly citrus, cut through with a sweetened basil syrup. It had tasted, she wrote, like new beginnings.

The summer before, in 2018, she’d sat on a porch in North Carolina with an old friend, watched Spanish moss swing gently from the boughs of trees in a breeze that barely touched the sweltering heat. This lemonade more sugar than lemon, so sweet it made her teeth ache. Her skin slick with sweat; the quiet companionship of someone who knows you well.

It has been 115 days since August 11th, 2019 – 31.51% of the year – and Spencer has been staring at this autopsy photo for 203 seconds. 200 seconds than he normally does, unsure if that’s because he can’t stop thinking about lemonade or if it’s because the picture of this dead woman is hitting him like it’s his very first time. Her name is Molly Hauser. She was 26 and two days. Spent her birthday with the unsub. Which…makes him feel unsteady when he thinks about it. A florist. She owned her own shop. It’s closed now. Shuttered. It is 18 degrees Fahrenheit outside with a wind approaching 25 miles an hour. Or it was when he and Morgan arrived at the medical examiner’s office, his scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. The woman’s mouth is open like she died mid-scream. Her lips are so cracked they are broken open, cracked bloody. They look like mashed, overripe fruit. “He gave them enough water to keep them alive,” the ME says as she comes around the table, “but not much more than that.” Spencer grimaces. He sets the photo down on the empty metal table. He doesn’t know exactly how long ago what was left of Molly lay here. Cannot calculate the seconds, the minutes, the ratio. He doesn’t know exactly how long it will be until another woman lays in her place. Margaret probably. Spencer reminds himself that if he does his job right, she won’t be laying there at all. He flares his nostrils, twitches. The room seems suddenly very small. It’s an impossibility of psychics for a room to take shape in that way. He knows that the room is shifting because he has stopped breathing deeply. That something inside of him has triggered his brain’s flight or fight response. It hurts his head to even think about it. The headaches he’s had as of late, he believes, are psychosomatic, Manifestations of a grief that he has not, at least yet, been able to reason with. Spencer sets the photo back onto the table. She looks cold in it. Which is irrational. She is dead. A chill runs up him.

He has done this work for a decade. Give or take a few months, his headache now working up a crescendo that makes his thought jerk unhelpfully around in his skull. He has done this work for a decade, but it feels now deeply embedded under his skin in a way that it has not before. Close to home. Close to the bone. He remembers the sound of the shot, ringing clearly in his mind. When he looks back at the metal table all he can see is Maeve there. Her bare flesh against the cold metal. A bullet in the soft tissue of her brain. From across the table, Morgan fixes him with a look.

For the first time in his life, Spencer wonders if he would like a cigarette. Something to do with his hands. A hit of nicotine that might, chemically, take some sort of edge off. The day is almost too bright as he and Morgan walk out into it. Frigidly cold but brightly sunny. Like a mean trick. Some of the agents at his NA meetings smoke cigarettes, long tendrils of smoke rising up into the night sky as they pile out afterwards. Spencer knows too much about carcinogens to pick up the habit but the urge alone is enough to get him to open his mouth. “I think I’m getting soft.”

Morgan pauses, the key fob for their SUV in his raised hand. He looks back at Spencer almost cockeyed before raising a single eyebrow. Spencer knows that Morgan does this when he is processing someone’s reaction and has decided the best approach is levity. Spencer appreciates that. JJ has mostly just given him consoling looks. Garcia too. Hotch gave him curt, professional condolences, holding his hand for just a little long as he shook it. Rossi made him drink a whiskey. So yes, levity is good. Morgan chuckles, the car beeps as he unlocks it. “You’ve always been soft, kid.” 

Spencer doesn’t acknowledge that, slipping into the passenger’s seat. “This one is getting to me.”

Morgan is quiet for 45 seconds. Which is a long time for him. An almost glacial amount of time for him. He fiddles with the radio; he clears his throat. “You’re coming off of some tough shit, Reid. That makes sense to me. That you’d feel how you’re feeling.”

Spencer frowns, narrows his eyes. “She doesn’t look like Maeve.” He says it then regrets it. Even though he knows it was what Morgan was thinking. Morgan’s frown has deepened. “The two of them have nothing on common.”

“Come on, big brain you think that matters?” Spencer purses his lips into a thin line. He looks onto the passing street. The city bustles, undisturbed. Somewhere out in it – likely within a ten-mile radius of her own apartment – Margaret is out there. Dead or wishing she was.

Mama Ayesha’s smells like sumac and oregano, like cooking meat. Even standing outside it. Spencer’s stomach growls. He wonders if he will ever be able to go to this restaurant, ever be able to eat here. Decides, as he surveys the sidewalk, that if Margaret dies he probably won’t be able to stomach it. That if she doesn’t, he’ll go by himself to try it.

They’re here to do a little canvassing. The restaurant is within the unsub’s hunting ground and they have a profile now. White. Male. Likely between the ages of 35 and 45. Physically strong but able to blend in well with a crowd. Doesn’t stand out. Personally or professionally. He likely has a job adjacent to law enforcement, one that will give him the pretense of authority. JJ and Rossi are at a nearby mall interviewing security guards. Spencer stuffs his hands into his pockets. It’s colder now than when they left the medical examiner’s office. An unseasonal drop of nearly seven degrees, approaching temperatures more common in January or February than early December.

The man is more than likely impotent. They know that because he rapes his victims with objects. What objects they’re not entirely sure. Likely something he has on hand, something someone would have in a tool shed. The more degrading the better. Spencer stands where Margaret probably stood, looks out at the line of cars, down the sidewalk, empty now, because of the heavy cop presence. They found bits of glass inside one of the women. The florist. Molly. The others were too badly decomposed. He wonders if it would be helpful if he got a piece of the dessert Margaret had, catching a whiff of honey as someone leave the restaurant, if that would flesh out the victimology. Probably not. Spencer wishes he hadn’t skipped lunch.

They still don’t know why the unsub starves his victims. Maybe because he’s a sadist. Though not all of the markers fit. Maybe because he’s neglectful. Maybe because he wants them to beg. That may be a chief component of his sexual gratification. The begging. Morgan comes up beside him, hands him a piece of mint gum. Spencer chews it until his jaw aches. Hotch has been eyeing him from the car. He knows they’re watching him. Knows that they are trying to ascertain if he really is ready to come back. He isn’t sure anymore. The unsub probably had a distant mother. A string of rejections. He wants women to pay attention to him. The gum has started to lose its flavor. That’s because he’s chewing it fast. The faster he chews the more saliva he produces. Spencer wonders why Margaret liked this restaurant so much. What about it drew her here so many times. He glances back toward the awning. The food must be really, really good.

Morgan says it in passing. So quick it takes Spencer a rare moment to process it. “We got her.” Margaret. Because who else would it be. He rises slowly from his desk. It’s late, most of the building empty now, a vacuous quiet that makes the Christmas decorations seem almost lonely. But Morgan is already disappearing into the hall. Spencer picks up the pace after him.

“Are we going to the ME’s?” Spencer says when he finally catches up to Morgan standing, now in front of the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.

“The hospital.”

“The…” Spencer blinks at him. His heart feels strange in his chest, pounding too quick and too hard. “Hospital.” The elevator dings open and they both step inside, Spencer’s hand tight around the strap of his messenger bag. His brain clicks back on, thoughts whirring. He blinks as he talks, shaking his head. “We don’t even have a suspect. We just finished the profile. How could we have found the house?”

“We didn’t” Spencer blinks, swallows. His brain churns over the discomfort of not understanding. “She found us. Bit through her gag. Homegirl screamed her goddamn head off until a neighbor called the cops.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


End file.
